Nielsen//NetRatings reports that traffic from home to movie sites surged during the week ending February 22, as surfers went online to purchase advance tickets for The Passion of The Christ. Greg Bloom, senior Internet analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings, said "Movie ticketing sites often spike in traffic prior to releases for big-budget films, as fans purchase tickets in advance online."

The Digital Marketing Dialog, a North American online survey conducted by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine, USA TODAY, and Responsys, received responses from over 400 top marketing decision-makers regarding the impact, influence, role, value and uptake of digital marketing technologies and programs across all industry sectors.

According to the third annual report on women leaders in 25 telecom, 18 publishing and printing, 11 entertainment, and 3 advertising companies, conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, found that women comprise 15% of executive leaders and 12% of board members in top communications companies - numbers virtually unchanged from the previous year.

The DoubleClick Q4 2003 Ad Serving Trend Report, recently released, contains aggregate data and is based on over 1.3 trillion ads globally from thousands of clients served since Q1 of 2002. Useful as benchmarking statistics for advertisers, it represents one of the largest pools of information from both publishers and advertisers on ads served during a given period. Rich media increased 59% from Q4 of 2002 to nearly 40% of all ads served in Q4 of 2003. Flash accounts for the largest percentage of rich media served and is now nearly 16% of all ads served.

Gary Fries, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Radio Advertising Bureau, opened his semi-annual State of the Industry speech by noting that "Advertisers need to show their stockholders an accountability of every dollar spent. Media buyers and planners are trying to accomplish this for advertisers and are challenged to show ROI. The Radio industry is not doing a good job of showing this. We have to be able to document ROI."

Mediamark Research Inc. and Interactive Market Systems Inc. recently released a report prepared by NAA Business Analysis & Research Department that reveals 99.9 million adults (18+) in the U.S. read an average issue of a daily newspaper. And, on Sunday, 116 million readers nationwide read an average issue.

A study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that, while urban and suburban Internet penetration rates have risen, rural Internet penetration has remained roughly 10 percentage points behind the national average in each of the last four years.

The Nielsen//NetRatings top 10's for the week ending February 8th

According to the latest findings of the NRF Executive Opinion Survey, retail executives are anxiously looking to the new year with a renewed sense of optimism and hope. The Retail Sector Performance Index (RSPI) reached a new record in January with a reading of 65.0 percent, more than double the same period a year ago, and 9.4 percentage points above December's reading.

In its new report "Overcoming the Spam Effect: Maximizing E-Mail Marketing Message Delivery", Jupiter Research finds that the cost to online marketers of permission e-mail messages, being erroneously blocked as spam, will balloon from $230 million in 2003 to $419 million in 2008. With the increase in protection spending, and the overall increase in email volume, the research reports that permission e-mail being erroneously blocked will decline from 17% today to just under 10% in 2008.